Future YA Reads

As the fall season approaches, we're all hearing about what's coming next, but we're scifi writers, yo, we're always looking to the FUTURE, so I thought I'd share some recent YA acquisitions that will be hitting the shelves in 2014!  (Doesn't 2014 sound so futuristic?  Perhaps it's the "teen" part.)

Shaunta Grimes's VIRAL NATION, the first books in a post-apocalyptic series featuring a high-functioning autistic sixteen-year-old girl and her older brother as they discover that the world they live in is not what it seems and the rules they've been forced to obey are there to enslave them rather than protect them, to Michelle Vega at Berkley, in a two-book deal, for publication in 2013, by Kim Lionetti at BookEnds.

R.C. Lewis's STITCHING SNOW, in which a royal teen runaway is scraping together a living in a mining settlement on the far side of the universe, until she is discovered and "rescued" against her will... a rescue operation that just might kill her, to Catherine Onder at Disney-Hyperion, in a two-book deal, in a six-figure deal, for publication in Summer 2014, by Jennifer Laughran at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

Jenny Martin's debut TRACKED, pitched as Star Wars meets Speed Racer, in which a daring, street-racing girl transforms from rebel to revolutionary after a taking a no-win deal to race the corporate rally circuit, where she's catapulted between the boy who's been running alongside her all her life and the intense, castoff rogue who prepares her all too well for the road, to Heather Alexander at Dial, in a very nice deal, in a pre-empt, in a two-book deal, by Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger (world).

VCFA grad Amy Rose Capetta's debut ENTANGLED, pitched as Firefly as a YA novel, in which a girl who thought she was alone in the universe with just her guitar, finds out that she is one of two humans to be experimentally connected on the particle level, and has to launch herself across space to save the boy she is quantum entangled with, with the help of a smuggler and her rag tag crew aboard a living spaceship, to Kate O'Sullivan atHoughton Mifflin Harcourt Children's, at auction, in a very nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger (world English).

Kass Morgan's THE HUNDRED, following 100 teenagers with dark secrets, who leave their homes -- enormous, city-like spaceships -- to recolonize a barely recognizable Earth, only to discover they cannot escape their pasts, to Elizabeth Bewley at Little, Brown Children's, and Kate Howard andHarriet Bourton at Hodder & Stoughton, in a two-book deal, for publication in Spring 2014 and Fall 2014, by Sara Shandler and Joelle Hobeika at Alloy Entertainment (World English). THE MADMAN'S DAUGHTER trilogy author Megan Shepherd's THE CAGE trilogy, following six teens put in an elaborate "human zoo" by a powerful and psychic otherworldly race, and one girl's attempts to escape without falling first for her terrifyingly beautiful captor, whose job is to keep her in the Cage forever, to Kristin Daly Rens at Balzer & Bray, in a significant deal, for publication in Summer 2014, by Josh Adams and Quinlan Lee at Adams Literary (NA). Care to discuss trends?